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Classic.
:lol:
@sceptical guy wrote:
Child abuse is evil nobody condones it but like patriotism, the denunciation of abusers can be the last refuge of the scoundrel.
Scep’s points about the complexities of abuse and accusations highlight some of the difficulties in this area, although I can see that some people think they come across a bit out of context in this thread.
I think there are very serious implications from the Savile case. What I fear is that our wider responsibilities to protect vulnerable children might be lost, because people’s energy is spent denouncing Savile and burning anyone who failed to blow the whistle on him.
I know it is a subtle point. I am not defending Savile – his fate is sealed. But I do want us to concentrate on hearing and supporting the victims, and then better protecting vulnerable minors, rather than going on a witch hunt, for example, against people at the BBC.
As I said in a previous post, this is the story of a whole rotten culture, and the attitudes of society which supported it. There will have been other celebrity abusers, and scores of people who had clues but did not want to really believe what was going on. Even the views of the police, media and the wider public to these issues may have contributed to the environment that allowed the abuse to happen and made it difficult to report.
Scep is of course right that loudly condemning child abuse can itself be a cover for hatred and abuse. I was dismayed at the height of the Portsmouth panics to see paediatricians’ homes attacked, as well as the bitter irony of a mother on TV spitting hatred against theoretical abusers who might live in her area, while her child played unsupervised in the street, dirty from head to toe, dressed only in a disposable nappy and a vest. Wonder what the greatest risk to that kid’s life chances were?
For all the reasons above, we need to learn the lessons to better protect the vulnerable. Learning those lessons as a society, whilst ensuring the abused have a voice as well as personal support, is more important than finding living people on whom we can exact retribution for a dead man’s crimes.
Not suggesting anyone here is doing that, but you can see the pressure building up in parts of the media for the witch hunt. It would be sad if the media and the wider public were satisfied by getting blood, to the detriment of the much harder job of protecting the vulnerable and really learning the lessons.
@kent f OBE wrote:
Enjoy the break Panda…I know I did…mind you when you come back you will probably wonder why you bothered :lol:
How can you say that when there are people like me here?
OK, I come and go a bit myself but still….
:shock:
@minim wrote:
@sceptical guy wrote:
From my memory, underage girls were seen as part of the rewards for pop bands in the 60s. There was certainly plenty of opportunity.
I do hope that any allegations about Sir John Lennon, Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Ringo Starr, Sir Mick Jagger aren’t being covered up!
I’m sure none are made, though, as these gentlemen were surely saintly when it came to girls.
You sound as if you think all men would regularly have had sex with 12 or 13 year old girls. That really does not say much for the male of the species. I know the point you are makiing, but unfortunately, you have done the equivalent to shooting yourself in the foot.
I know Scep has made his point in quite a controversial way, but I do think that there are wider issues about the actions of male DJs, rock stars, actors etc. etc. over the years.
And it is quite damning, not of the whole males species, but of the people who have abused their power.
We do need to think about how young girls relate to celebrities and how we protect them. Is it acceptable to let vulnerable under age girls have days out unsupervised with a celebrity on his own? How do we protect girls who flock round pop stars and can be taken advantage of, willing or otherwise. How do we stop girls who want a career in the media from being abused and all of the nastiness of the casting couch or the casual grope while working?
These questions are more important than simply condemning a dead man who has committed abuse, especially when our common sense tells us that it is not an isolated case.
We can fry the guy who pulled the BBC investigation from Newsnight and take down Jimmy Saville’s headstone, but the unpleasant stench of a culture which allowed abuse must be challenged.
We don’t need to ruin the many who kept their mouths shut to protect their reputations, mortgages, or kept quite so that they could carry on working to feed their families. We certainly don’t need to ruin the reputations of any of those people who were victims. These people are all suffering right now as we speak.
But once we stop flinging the mud and blaming everyone else, we do need to understand all the implications and not put all this down to one bad apple.
I think Jimmy Saville was part of a culture of inappropriateness when under-age girls flocked round celebrities. I am very sure that other DJs and pop stars did things with under-age girls, probably consensual, perhaps in knowledge of their true age, but not necessarily so. Jimmy’s actions could easily have gone unnoticed as part of this type of hero worship.
Rather than seeing this as an isolated case and going after the people who didn’t report him, we need to understand how it happened and do our best not to let this kind of culture develop around our celebrities.
This is all much bigger and much more worrying than just Jimmy Saville and needs all of us to look into our hearts about the risks we accept and what is suitable for girls under 16 when it comes to contact with celebrities.
Every “grope” and assault from the 60s to the 90s is not going to come out, but the lessons about how to better protect youngsters from this sort of thing need to be learned.
OK then.
With Panda gone (let’s hope temporarily), does that mean the end of this thread and have I just had the last word?
:P
@rubyred wrote:
where in Mother Glasgow are you from momes?
I am a kinning park/Cessnock kinda South sider.
If you’re a South sider I’m going to have to stop speaking to you.
I lived all round the North side, last place was Scotstounhill. My sister has however gone to the dark side and lives south of the river.
Forget all the England/Scotland and Glasgow/Edinburgh stuff, the real dividing line between good and evil is the River Clyde. I still feel uneasy south of the river.
Rangers/Celtic – pah both South side teams. Partick Thistle all the way.
:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
Only kidding just in case anyone reading this is in any doubt – Ruby will understand.
8)
@kent f OBE wrote:
:lol: Ruby….I remember the first time I heard an Asian with a Scottish accent…I seriously couldn’t stop staring and thought wow :lol: Also asked them to keep talking….took me ages to get over it….the amazement of it that is (sad I know)…..
but when you’re a kid you think everyone just talks like youWhen I was growing up I thought all Asians had Scottish accents – until I met their grandparents!
:lol:
For every way in which we’ve moved on there’s always an idiot taking it too far.
As Wordy says there is no pc brigade. There are however two groups of people set to wind us all up
– People who think sensitivity means that they have to go over the top to respect people. These are the self appointed idiots and are responsible for the bizarre school rules we hear about and so on. They haven’t read the official pc handbook, they just have no common sense.
– Journalists, often from the Sun, Mail or Telegraph, who regularly alert us to the latest pc scandal which is going to affect us all daily – usually something stupid done by one of the idiots above.Contrary to popular opinion
– black boards disappeared because technology overtook them, not cos an idiot said they were racist;
– girls were allowed to wear trousers in school, not cos the Muslims forced it on everybody, but because it was popular with all girls and skirts seemed old fashioned;
– paradoxically discriminatory decisions like only black kids being allowed to wear braids in school were dreamed up locally to annoy us and are not national schemes; and
– there is no Ministry of PC.There is lots of scaremongering about the pc brigade and how it is stopping us getting on with our lives.
And there are some self appointed idiots who try to introduce their own ideas locally.
Most of us are more sensible and know what’s offensive. Some of us moan a bit about some things being pc but that’s the extent of it.
The worrying thing is that the whole pc debate gives some people with genuinely offensive racist/sexist etc. views cover for their discrimination. All they have to do to cover their words or actions is say “everything’s gone too pc these days”. And then they go back to referring to the “paki” who works in stores, and commenting on the “tits” of the girl in admin, while she’s is close enough to hear.
I’m sure that doesn’t refer to any of my fellow posters, but that is why I tend to ignore anything that seems a bit too pc and let it go over my head. When the West Indies cricket team change their name, I might consider stopping using the term.
There is no conspiracy, just a few (well publicised) zealots going a bit too far every so often.
I choose to ignore them and do my best not to intentionally offend people – that seems a small price to live in a civilised society.
